Shuttle Leaves Station, Following Risky Fix-It Spacewalk

After more than a week of more thrills and mishaps than any zero-gravity trip ought to hold, the Discovery shuttle headed back for home early this morning.

Saturday’s risky spacewalk to fix the torn solar panel went as well as could be hoped Astronaut Scott Parazynski dangled from a 90-foot robotic arm, teasing together bits of a power system that was electrically live during the impromptu operation.

The Associated Press quotes an ebullient message from the operations center to the crew:

"This one will go down as one of our biggest successes in
(spacewalking) history," flight controllers told the crew in morning briefing documents. "Words can not express how proud you made everyone with the execution by the entire team."

The unexpectedly exciting mission may hold another message for NASA, however. In a sense, the crew and mission were lucky that the solar panel rip was fixable relatively quickly, by a team that was on site.
If a more serious incident had happened, without the shuttle nearby, the ramifications could have been more serious.

It may only be a matter of time before something more dangerous happens
– and in that case, NASA or its partners would be well-served by the ability to launch a rescue or repair mission quickly, almost on a moment’s notice.

With the shuttle being retired in a few years, it clearly can’t serve that purpose. But perhaps the new commercial spaceflight companies will be able to fill that role, at least as well as the Soyuz missions launched by Russia. NASA should make this a priority when it is funding and helping to guide development of companies like SpaceX.